The old stone church in the heart of skid row had been built before the area had deteriorated. Now it was, in more ways than one, the last refuge of humanity. Perhaps that was fitting...last refuge of humanity. It sat there in the fog of the December morning looking like something out of an old black and white movie. It was substantial–even fortress looking. It had medieval looking massive arched doors at the top of a set of slightly inclined steps.

Father Andrew was alone in the Church. He was full of dread, although he didn't know why, and he was praying. This was odd, because he never rose this early. Something had disturbed his sleep and he had awakened from bad dreams about destruction and the end of the world Maybe that’s why he wasn’t surprised when the front door burst open and a shabbily dressed man looking half starved, like most of the men on skid row, came running down the center aisle screaming “Father, save me. Save me. Help me. Protect me.”

Father Andrew rose and quickly tried to assess the situation. Ordinarily, he would have just believed that in addition to being at least half crazy, the man was suffering from the DT’s or a bad drug reaction. But, this was different. It was almost as though the priest’s dream had foretold this.

“What’s the matter, my son?” said the priest as he walked toward the man.

“Father, I need to be protected. He’s out there looking for me.”

“Who’s looking for you? The police?”

“No Father, it’s....Mic...Father... please protect me.”

Father Andrew, seeing the sheer terror in the man’s eyes, put his hand on the man’s arm and led him through the side door away from the main part of the Church. Father Andrew locked the door after him and took the man through a maze of hallways to the door of a small private office in a portion of the Church
that was hardly ever used these days. Then, he led the man into the office, turned on the light and locked this door as well. He motioned the man to sit down. The man looked around frantically. Then, presumably because there were no windows in the room, gave a sigh of relief and slumped in his chair.

“Now, tell me my son, what’s the problem?” asked Father Andrew in his most calming tone of voice.

“Father, you won’t believe me and I don’t know were to start.”

“Well, how about starting with your name?”

“Sorry, Father, but that would be the wrong place to start. You’ll see why in a moment.

"I’m going to tell you some things that will make you think I’m crazy, but I’ll tell you anyway, because I don’t think anything will be hurt by me telling you these things at this late date."

"Father do you believe in evil?”

“Yes, the Church teaches that there is evil in the universe.”

“No, father, do you, personally, believe in evil; in evil that can take the form of a man?”

“Yes, I believe I do.”

“Father what I have to tell you goes against just about everything you’ve learned in your religious studies. Will you please promise me that you’ll let me finish without throwing me out, no matter what I tell you?”

“I agree. Do you want me just to listen, or can I ask questions as you tell me?”

“You can ask questions, Father, but please listen carefully.”

“How old do I look to you Father?”

“Oh, I don’t know, 40 or so I guess.”

“I was born more than 6000 years ago. I see how you’re looking at me, Father, but please keep listening.

“When I came here, the earth was peopled by ape creatures. They were sub-human.

"Earth people were more animals than man as we know him today. I wasn’t alone when I came; others of my people were with me. Our leader had a plan to destroy the ape creatures to make the earth safe for my people. I didn’t like the plan and tried to save the ape creatures by all means possible. Since I didn’t think I could succeed, I, and those who agreed with me, mated with the ape creatures so that their offspring would have some of our genes. We hoped that our people might then accept them.

"The plan wasn’t completely foolproof, though, because the birth canals and hip bones of the ape creatures were too small to easily pass the hybrid babies who had our larger heads.

" To get around that problem, we harvested fetuses that were half us and half human and implanted them in cattle where they grew to a point where we could extract them from the cattle and they would survive.

"Many hybrids were born–enough so that in time, the ape creatures were completely transformed into a new being who was about midway between my people and ape creatures internally, and who looked more like us on the outside.

"These new people were homo sapiens, Father. Those among my people who were opposed to what I was doing attempted to keep the hybrids from breeding with each other so that they would only breed with pure ape creatures and eventually breed themselves back into ape creatures.

"I was able to sneak two of the hybrids away to a safe area, where I talked them into breeding. Father, you know those two as Adam and Eve. The “apple” that they ate was this mating. They produced a race of children who looked much like us.

"They had blue eyes, blond hair and white skin. They were not completely like us, however, because they had what your legends call “souls.” My people do not have souls, Father. Let me clarify that. Souls are nothing more than the ape creature genes that the humans carry. My people do not have those genes.

"You know from your Bible that there was a War in Heaven and that some of us were cast out. You consider those of us who were cast out to be the evil ones, but Father, we are not evil, we are the saviors of mankind.

"Over the centuries we have protected humans. You asked my name Father. Let me tell it to you. My name is Lucifer.

" I’ve been called the Angel of the Morning, the Devil, Satan and a number of other names.

"Rather than being evil, I have been the leader of those protecting humans."

"The leader of the others is Yahweh. He wants humans destroyed and replaced with our kind. Yahweh has deceived you into thinking that he is good for you and that I am bad. Father, your people have gotten it exactly opposite to the way it truly is. You want to know who’s after me, Father? Why I ran into your church? It’s Michael. You've heard that name before, haven't you Father? You know him as the Archangel Michael. Michael has been sent to destroy me so that I can no longer protect humans.

"How am I protecting humans? I'll tell you. I'm keeping Michael from breeding the Sons of Light. Yes, Father, Michael is trying to breed souls out of humans so that they become the Sons of Light again. Father, you've heard of the Sons of Light from your Bible. Michael's purpose is to destroy mankind by allowing the repressed genes of our people to come forth and overwhelm ape creature genes. Michael has, for centuries, been trying to breed out those genes–to create a new race of Angels on earth.

"Why is this important now? Because it is believed that Michael may have succeeded and that a baby will be born, probably soon, who will grow up to destroy mankind. Father, the boy who will be born is Michael's son, and he will be of pure blood. He will also be called Michael. Wait a minute...Father... I sense Michael is near. He’s coming. I need to get out of here. Where’s the back door?”

Father Andrew was certain that the man was a paranoid schizophrenic and maybe dangerous, so he was relieved that the man wanted to leave. The Priest led him down the hallway to stairs that went down into the basement. “Go down those stairs and follow the overhead pipes until you come to a stairway. Go up the stairway and open the door. You’ll find yourself in a small garden. Go to the gate and let yourself out and you’ll be back on the street in back of the Church.”

The priest then returned to the main part of the Church. There, he found another homeless looking man dressed much as the first one.

“Father, I’m looking for a man who I think may have come in here. Did you see anyone?’

“No, my son.”

“Father, you’re lying to me, I can sense it. The man I’m looking for is a dangerous delusional maniac. He believes that he’s some sort of Angel or something.”

“I did speak to a man, my son, but he’s gone now. Who are you?”

“Okay, Father, let's stop the sham. I think you know who I am. My name is Michael. I am of the Elohim and I was sent by Yahweh. Whatever the man told you Father you need to know that you and I are on the same side. We both do God’s work, Father. The man you spoke to has put man above God and that is evil in the eyes of the Lord. That man is Satan and he follows the Son of Man, and this is wrong. He is a deceiver, Father. I have come to uplift man. Never mind, Father, I’m leaving now. You will forget what happened here tonight.”

The priest suddenly turned and started walking back to his room as though in a trance. When he awoke the next day he went back about his work. He had forgotten.

Meanwhile, more than three thousand miles away, in another city and in another skid row, it was just before midnight when the pregnant homeless woman felt her water break. She tried to run out of the alley she slept in to try to find some help, but she collapsed at the mouth of the alley. As the baby started to come, there was a shadow of a man standing there. “Don’t be alarmed," he said. "I’m a doctor. I work at Queen of Angels hospital. I’ll help you. At a minute past midnight the baby was born."

“It’s a boy,” said the doctor to the new mother.

“What’s your name,” said the woman.

“You can call me Dr. Michael,” came the reply.

“Dr. Michael,” said the woman, "your voice sounds familiar to me. Do I know you? It's kind of like a dream...it's as though I've seen you before...that we were intimate...before I got pregnant, right in this alley."

"No. You don't know me," lied the man calling himself Dr. Michael.

"Doctor, I’m going to name my baby after you.”

“Thank you, I’d like that. Listen, I don’t have my cell phone with me. Wait here and I’ll go find a telephone and call for an ambulance from the hospital. I’ll see you when you get there. Okay? Take good care of that child. His birth is something of a miracle.”

“Yes, thank you.” A few minutes later–too soon for Dr., Michael to have called an ambulance, an ambulance suddenly stopped at the mouth of the alley.

“How did you manage that all by yourself?” said one of the paramedics, as he looked at the baby with its umbilical cord professionally tied.

“I didn’t. I had help from Dr. Michael from your hospital. He called you.”

“There’s no Dr. Michael at our hospital, and no one called us,” said the paramedic. “You got lucky that we just happened to get lost in the fog and saw a light by this alley and came this way."

"There's no fog, and there's no light here," said the new mother.

"Sure there is...well, boy isn't that weird," said the paramedic. "I know there was some fog a few minutes ago. Oh well, never mind. You were just lucky, that's all."

"What day is it?" asked the new mother.

"Why, it's Christmas, of course," said the paramedic.

Little Michael didn't look much different from other babies. Oh, his skin was slightly more white, almost as though he were an albino, but few would notice. This was a necessary evolutionary change to let in more of the dim light that was going to be the norm on this planet in the near future. Little Michael would be strong and multiply on a planet ringed all about with clouds of the presence of the Lord, while others, without his adaptations, would gradually die off under the new conditions to come.

No, most of the differences born into Michael couldn't be seen by others, and this would protect Michael as he grew to manhood. Over the next few years hardly anyone would notice that Michael was just a little quicker than other people and that he could see better in the dark. Few would notice that he seemed to have a few more than the normal five senses, and that he was a little smarter than most people and that he seldom got sick. But that was to come. For the present, the little baby was being held by his Mother at the mouth of an alley on skid row.

Just then, Michael, the little blond baby, opened his blue eyes and he looked around; and in looking, he knew. He was the one who had come to destroy mankind so that the new mankind could come from out of the old. As the son replaces the father and the generations change, so too was there now to be a change like none that had ever before been seen on Earth. This was the start of a new age. What had been dormant for thousands of years was now stirring.

It was now the dawn of the new man and the twilight of mankind. Lucifer had been vanquished and man now had no
protection from a God that hated him and wanted him replaced.

# # #

THREE BOOKS BY HARD TO PIGEONHOLE H. MILLARD

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Ourselves Alone & Homeless Jack's Religion
messages of ennui and meaning in post-american america by H. Millard
In Ourselves Alone and Homeless Jack's Religion, H. Millard, the hard to pigeonhole author of The Outsider and Roaming the Wastelands, has put together some of his category bending commentaries on post-American America. The commentaries deal with politics, philosophy, free speech, genocide, religion and other topics in Millard's edgy style and lead up to Homeless Jack's Religion, in which Homeless Jack lays out revelations he found in a dumpster on skid row. Browse Before You BuyISBN: 0-595-32646-3